... the next time a blue chip recruit makes a head-scratching college choice out of college. It ain’t for the gumbo.

[UCDaveD]

There should not be any age limit for any sport. If a player is good enough and thinks he can handle it without college than go for it. Just like any other job. But the NCAA would fight it. I can’t believe this age rule has not been challenged in court

Didn’t Maurice Clarett try to challenge the NFL’s age limit in court and get smacked down?

 

[gtcam]

It's not complicated, schools should be free to pay their employees what they believe they are worth, including athletes. If actually paying your workers endangers your entire industry, then that's a pretty harsh indictment of the industry. Or put another way, who is more deserving of fairness and equity: the workers who have heretofore been unpaid, or the institutions who have financially benefited from unpaid work for decades?

Since when are athletes employees? These athletes get scholarships worth tens of thousands of dollars and in the major schools they are given housing that the normal student would only dream about. Their food, on the road is better than any other student plus they all get free tutoring. NOBODY is twisting their arms to go to school - they can got to Europe or Asia and play.
I think all universities pay their employees what they think they are worth and like in any other case if the employees don't agree - find another job. College athletes are not employees. If they want to be an employee, they can go to any of the outlets available to them, get paid and as in most jobs - produce or you are out - quite a bit different from college.

 

[smoothcriminal]

It’s all about the Benjamin’s .

 

[andy34]

Since when are athletes employees? These athletes get scholarships worth tens of thousands of dollars and in the major schools they are given housing that the normal student would only dream about. Their food, on the road is better than any other student plus they all get free tutoring. NOBODY is twisting their arms to go to school - they can got to Europe or Asia and play.
I think all universities pay their employees what they think they are worth and like in any other case if the employees don't agree - find another job. College athletes are not employees. If they want to be an employee, they can go to any of the outlets available to them, get paid and as in most jobs - produce or you are out - quite a bit different from college.

I didn't say that athletes were employees - obviously, that isn't technically the case. But I implied that in essence they are, because they provide labor for the university, they just aren't paid for it the same way other employees are. Other employees earn a wage commensurate with the value that the job market determines they are worth. For some straaange reason, the athletes who unarguably produce vast amounts of wealth for the universities are only "paid" pennies on the dollar. I don't think that's right.

 

[Engineer90]

Here are a few sticking points:

1. Sunk costs. Universities have a lot of money invested in facilities. What happens to them if college sports goes away?
2. If there is no good answer to #1, how do they pay for operations and maintenance of those facilities?
3. Football has no minor league at all.
4. Basketball's minor league is insufficient.
5. What happens to all the people employed by ADs if it all goes away?
6. Elimination of revenue sports has to occur across the board at all colleges. Sports is advertising for colleges and many schools would fear what happens to them if they drop sports and others don't.

Club sports are great. Intermurals are great. Pseudo-professional sports and academics are not great. The NFL needs to create a minor league. Make a deal with colleges to use their facilities, if necessary. But the teams need to be tied to NFL teams and not colleges. The NBA needs to expand their minor league to be like MLB's or European soccer. THEN people would watch just like they watch AAA ball. It works for soccer in Europe and it works for baseball here. You just need to build the minor league system properly. What basketball has now is a half-arsed hybrid mutant system.

Colleges need to eliminate all athletic scholarships just like the Ivies have done. Hell, they should eliminate all admissions benefits too. It is a disgrace that far more qualified kids are pushed out. But that won't happen until there is no longer money to be made and that won't happen until proper minor leagues are in place.

 

[Jbirdp5]

Here are a few sticking points:

1. Sunk costs. Universities have a lot of money invested in facilities. What happens to them if college sports goes away?
2. If there is no good answer to #1, how do they pay for operations and maintenance of those facilities?
3. Football has no minor league at all.
4. Basketball's minor league is insufficient.
5. What happens to all the people employed by ADs if it all goes away?
6. Elimination of revenue sports has to occur across the board at all colleges. Sports is advertising for colleges and many schools would fear what happens to them if they drop sports and others don't.

Club sports are great. Intermurals are great. Pseudo-professional sports and academics are not great. The NFL needs to create a minor league. Make a deal with colleges to use their facilities, if necessary. But the teams need to be tied to NFL teams and not colleges. The NBA needs to expand their minor league to be like MLB's or European soccer. THEN people would watch just like they watch AAA ball. It works for soccer in Europe and it works for baseball here. You just need to build the minor league system properly. What basketball has now is a half-arsed hybrid mutant system.

Colleges need to eliminate all athletic scholarships just like the Ivies have done. Hell, they should eliminate all admissions benefits too. It is a disgrace that far more qualified kids are pushed out. But that won't happen until there is no longer money to be made and that won't happen until proper minor leagues are in place.

Who watches minor league baseball? I don’t know anyone who does

 

[huskymedic]

Who watches minor league baseball? I don’t know anyone who does

Yard Goats Wrap Up Successful Second Season Complete With Historic Attendance

>>The Yard Goats lead the Eastern League in total attendance selling out the final 19 games. Thirty-one of the last 33 home games were standing room crowds. It didn't matter if it was a weeknight or a weekend, Dunkin' Donuts Park was packed.<<

 

[Jbirdp5]

Yard Goats Wrap Up Successful Second Season Complete With Historic Attendance

>>The Yard Goats lead the Eastern League in total attendance selling out the final 19 games. Thirty-one of the last 33 home games were standing room crowds. It didn't matter if it was a weeknight or a weekend, Dunkin' Donuts Park was packed.<<

Do they have a tv deal? I should have been more specific to my point. Minor league baseball isn’t a revenue generator on a large scale. The bluefish were fun for a time here in ct as were the rock cats. Both lost money

 

[upstater]

Didn’t Maurice Clarett try to challenge the NFL’s age limit in court and get smacked down?

Also, jobs have a lot of requirements, so... it's not like all jobs will hire just anyone who can do the jobs. Many jobs have rules/hurdles to jump over. The NFL enjoys its free college training and likely doesn't want to mess with that.

 

[upstater]

IFor some straaange reason, the athletes who unarguably produce vast amounts of wealth for the universities are only "paid" pennies on the dollar. I don't think that's right.

I already explained that this isn't true. Universities exploit a great many employees in order to keep costs down. It's not just athletes (in fact, other employees are bigger revenue producers than the athletes and they make less than the athletes).

 

[polycom]

I think players should make money off their likeness but using Zion as a measuring stick to say top 25 players would get exposure around the world is insane. Zion is once or twice in a lifetime college player and maybe a once in a life time marketing machine. He’ll Cam Reddish isn’t even marketable or as good. Not to mention have you lived overseas? It’s not exactly like coming from poor town USA. Players should get compensated in some way but there is no real mechanism to do that right now if you factor in the industry of big time college athletics.

 

[Engineer90]

Do they have a tv deal? I should have been more specific to my point. Minor league baseball isn’t a revenu1e generator on a large scale. The bluefish were fun for a time here in ct as were the rock cats. Both lost money

Who cares how much money it generates? It gives athletes a place to develop and make money while doing so. And if anyone should lose money, it should be pro sports teams, not colleges. The cost of college is already too damn high. It won't happen but it would be good for everyone if colleges cut the cord.

 

[Jbirdp5]

Who cares how much money it generates? It gives athletes a place to develop and make money while doing so. And if anyone should lose money, it should be pro sports teams, not colleges. The cost of college is already too damn high. It won't happen but it would be good for everyone if colleges cut the cord.

Lol who cares how much money it generates? Go ahead start a business and look for investors. When they ask you how much money you expect to make tell them who cares. Let’s see how many people invest in your business.

 

[UCDaveD]

How could you possibly know that? He was the 10th player picked in the draft. Could have been higher or lower if he had gone to Arizona. Nobody will ever know.

Jennings was the #1 overall recruit coming out of high school. Since him, every single #1 recruit has been drafted better than 10. Favors, Barnes, AD, Noel, Wiggins, Okafor, Simmons, Jackson, & Bagley. The worst was 7th. How can he possibly claim that he improved his draft stock by going overseas? Just absurd.

 

[Chief00]

The free market? The TV market?

You seem to think the free market has college athletes being paid a lot more than 300K.

How does this work? Only the football and basketball players are getting paid? They're making 500K or a million while everyone else makes nothing? We're going to pay each player 500K or we're going to pay each player differently based off of the money we think they bring into the school? How do we quantify that? I don't see how any of this works...

Seems to me no female athletes would ever get paid, football and basketball would be the only sports that would survive and it would be only a handful of schools competing, maybe only a small amount of schools who still have athletic programs. The inequities between the different sports, the different sexes, and the schools would be untenable and would never hold up in the courts or with the schools.

So the UConn Athletic Dept, in theory, is losing $40M per year. Given that in the “free market” you lay off your workers and close shop. So is this the outcome we want? An out of state player is currently getting a scholarship for $200k. People on this board criticized Hurley for not forcing guys out. If we directly pay these guys then that would have to change - the real World consequences for underperformance will come earlier.

 

[djct1999]

So the UConn Athletic Dept, in theory, is losing $40M per year. Given that in the “free market” you lay off your workers and close shop. So is this the outcome we want? An out of state player is currently getting a scholarship for $200k. People on this board criticized Hurley for not forcing guys out. If we directly pay these guys then that would have to change - the real World consequences for underperformance will come earlier.

Unlike some others on here, Chief you are smart enough to know that the money paid to these kids doesn't come directly from the school.

 

[upstater]

The Beltway Ballers Coach only got $25k from Jim/UConn and it was legal at the time.

I don't know how thy divvied up that check--but in fact, the check was written to Baltimore Parks & Rec., which sponsored an AAU team run by the Beltway Ballers coach. Impossible to know how much the city passed onto the coach, but the actual check was written to the city.

 

[Chief00]

I don't know how thy divvied up that check--but in fact, the check was written to Baltimore Parks & Rec., which sponsored an AAU team run by the Beltway Ballers coach. Impossible to know how much the city passed onto the coach, but the actual check was written to the city.

Good point about the layering of funds and Chief supported Jim Calhoun’s plan 100%. Gary Williams, the coach of the University of Maryland, flipped out when he was out smarted by Calhoun.

 

[Engineer90]

Who cares how much money it generates? It gives athletes a place to develop and make money while doing so. And if anyone should lose money, it should be pro sports teams, not colleges. The cost of college is already too damn high. It won't happen but it would be good for everyone if colleges cut the cord.

You are missing the point. If colleges wanted to cut the cord, they could. They don't care if the NFL or NBA loses money by having to build and run proper minor leagues. I don't care either. Nor do I care if they care. In fact, I would prefer it if the pro leagues stopped screwing the colleges and the colleges stopped screwing the players. That would be nice. If the cord were cut, the pro leagues would have no choice but lose that money because the alternative is to destroy the product and lose it all.

My position is simple. Colleges should not be in the business of sports but, if they are, I want my school to do well.

 

[Chief00]

If we were paying Stanley, when he had the baby mama issue, he would have paid her off rather than having to take a leave of absence and work it off and be treated like any other employee.
As for Rudy, he loved UConn and it wasn’t about the money. After he announced he was going to The League he changed his mind and wanted to come back to school but it was too late. If it was about the money with Rudy he wouldn’t have changed his mind.

 

[Stinger92860]

Who watches minor league baseball? I don’t know anyone who does

If you are a 2019 yankee fan, you are pulling for Scranton.

 

[Jbirdp5]

You are missing the point. If colleges wanted to cut the cord, they could. They don't care if the NFL or NBA loses money by having to build and run proper minor leagues. I don't care either. Nor do I care if they care. In fact, I would prefer it if the pro leagues stopped screwing the colleges and the colleges stopped screwing the players. That would be nice. If the cord were cut, the pro leagues would have no choice but lose that money because the alternative is to destroy the product and lose it all.

My position is simple. Colleges should not be in the business of sports but, if they are, I want my school to do well.

In your model the players get screwed because they only get taken care of if they are making money. Ask minor league baseball players that aren’t bonus babies how well they are taken care of? Not very well. The league will give them just enough to get by, and nothing to fall back on. For the elite player they are fine, but for everyone else they don’t get the benefits and fallback options that college would give them

 

[upstater]

Good point about the layering of funds and Chief supported Jim Calhoun’s plan 100%. Gary Williams, the coach of the University of Maryland, flipped out when he was out smarted by Calhoun.

Gary Williams, the guy who used to pay the Pump Brothers $100k a year for their "newsletter," and comp them F4 tickets. Yep, Nik Caner-Medley... A Pump Brother player.

Not to mention Williams began recruiting Gay the summer before his senior year. UConn was on him when he was a sophomore because of Calhoun's Reggie Lewis connection.

 

[Engineer90]

In your model the players get screwed because they only get taken care of if they are making money. Ask minor league baseball players that aren’t bonus babies how well they are taken care of? Not very well. The league will give them just enough to get by, and nothing to fall back on. For the elite player they are fine, but for everyone else they don’t get the benefits and fallback options that college would give them

Life is tough for most of us. The path is rarely obvious. The hypothetical kid in your example needs to make a choice. Minor leagues or go to college and play club ball. If the kid doesn't want to risk being a small fish in the minors, he can get a degree and give his sport a shot later if he still has that itch.

 

[Jbirdp5]

Life is tough for most of us. The path is rarely obvious. The hypothetical kid in your example needs to make a choice. Minor leagues or go to college and play club ball. If the kid doesn't want to risk being a small fish in the minors, he can get a degree and give his sport a shot later if he still has that itch.

So what your saying is because life is tough your going to give kids less of an opportunity. Sounds good!

 

[andy34]

Life is tough for most of us. The path is rarely obvious. The hypothetical kid in your example needs to make a choice. Minor leagues or go to college and play club ball. If the kid doesn't want to risk being a small fish in the minors, he can get a degree and give his sport a shot later if he still has that itch.

This is a really ignorant example. Players in the minor leagues are grossly exploited and in fact earn less than the federal minimum wage. MLB lobbies extensively to maintain this exemption under anti-trust law - not because they can't afford it (they can) but because it provides them a docile workforce. There's no good reason to constrain any player's ability to earn what they are worth.

 

[Engineer90]

So what your saying is because life is tough your going to give kids less of an opportunity. Sounds good!

Boo hoo. My concern is with the university. No more losing money on sports if it can be avoided. Not a difficult concept. The hypothetical kid has at least two opportunities. And it is one more than most kids. And, by the way, for every scholarship that is not offered to a kid who only got accepted for sports, there is one more slot for a kid who worked hard academically and deserves to be at the school. What about THAT kid's opportunities.

 

[Engineer90]

This is a really ignorant example. Players in the minor leagues are grossly exploited and in fact earn less than the federal minimum wage. MLB lobbies extensively to maintain this exemption under anti-trust law - not because they can't afford it (they can) but because it provides them a docile workforce. There's no good reason to constrain any player's ability to earn what they are worth.

No, ignorant is thinking the universities should make up for what MLB should be doing.

 

[Jbirdp5]

Boo hoo. My concern is with the university. No more losing money on sports if it can be avoided. Not a difficult concept. The hypothetical kid has at least two opportunities. And it is one more than most kids. And, by the way, for every scholarship that is not offered to a kid who only got accepted for sports, there is one more slot for a kid who worked hard academically and deserves to be at the school. What about THAT kid's opportunities.

I think you take a lot of liberties with your assumptions. So if they cut 12 basketball scholarships that means they create 12 academic scholarships? I don’t think it’s apples to apples like that, and I don’t know if any kid gets waitlisted because a basketball players taking his spot lol. And if all you care about is the university not wasting money, and ur not a basketball fan, why would you come on here?

 

[whaler11]

Boo hoo. My concern is with the university. No more losing money on sports if it can be avoided. Not a difficult concept. The hypothetical kid has at least two opportunities. And it is one more than most kids. And, by the way, for every scholarship that is not offered to a kid who only got accepted for sports, there is one more slot for a kid who worked hard academically and deserves to be at the school. What about THAT kid's opportunities.

I guess they could drop every sport but men’s basketball and run in the black....